The Donald vs Big Tech

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

much of what he is saying is starting at a point of 'well racism exists but...' as opposed to 'racism doesn't exist, they're making it up'

My contention is precisely that he really is saying the latter, though dressing it up as the former. Or at least, what he's really saying is a lot closer to the latter than the former. Murray places himself quite explicitly (not here, but in plenty of other articles and interviews) in the camp of "Racism is dead, so why do minorities keep resuscitating it?" He has set himself up to be one of the rhetorical arsenals for every superficial argument you're likely to encounter online as to why systemic racism doesn't exist, stuff that's essentially no more sophisticated than "If racism exists, then how come there are poor white people?", and so on. He knows it's bullshit, but he also knows it's persuasive, it works, it sells, it spreads, it gets people voting the way he thinks they should. He's a very smart guy.

[Caomhaoin]

Your lack of nuance is problematic.

[Pedrito]

Murray is very English I would say. He's a bit like a lot of Spaniards I meet here who find the idea that they are somehow responsible for what Hernan Cortez did 500 years ago akin to telling them that tomatos are blue.

And yet the Irishman in me is like 'you bastards don't understand colonialism and the colonial mind' and then I read Octavio Paz and all his metaphors could be the very metaphors I grew up on and listened to all my childhood. I say it to my wife who is Mexican and she's like 'what in the fuck are you talking about?' and yet every now and then she will curse the dirty Spanish who never saw a bar of soap in their lives and who raped and destroyed a beautiful culture and built their poxy churches up on top of them beautiful pyramids and carvings of Quetzalcoatl, so beautiful in the moonlight that you could almost taste the sacrificial blood coming off them half a millenium later. And then I remember what my grandmother used say that The English treated their own even worse than they did the Irish. And the Spaniards paid for their sins with a civil war and all that hocus pocus.

And in some ways that's what BLM is trying to do. They're trying to be an Irishman explaining stuff to an Englishman that he won't ever understand. And yet maybe the Irishman has had his head filled with a lot of stuff that suited him in the past. The English were the cause of everything the bastards and he's had Irish people who have filled his head with a lot of twisted shit that suited their own purposes, so he finds himself the pawn in a game.

And in other ways BLM is just keeping the whole  narrative going. The systemic stuff(surely impossible to truly quantify a theory with so many variables?), the hurt, the past..it's complicated as fuck. And it's also very very theory based and bookish.

I suppose someone like Murray then comes along and with a cooler head and not taking all of that into account, he starts to look at the issue rationally and what he finds is that a lot of what is being said is simply not holding up under scrutiny of facts and figures. The police aren't killing more blacks then whites etc etc etc etc..we've heard all the arguments.

But, he forgets to include all.the other shit. The feelings and the perceptions and the intuintions that are almost impossible to really be able to quantify.

So, we're left with a balls of a situation.

And the only way forward cannot be to further divide and shout and roar and burn shit down unless your intention is to actually start some sort of civil war, which, I suspect some of the real fringe lunatics we see involved are definitely trying to do. There's got to be a middle ground and giving into very dubious organisations, as the entire Western world is doing, that are not all they purport to be needs some sort of kickback. We need the lad with the cool head and the facts and figures to give us a counterbalance. Is Murray perfect? No. Sam Harris? No. But they can put some sort of framework around an issue that is so wild and erratic and open to so much interpretation that it gives us something to work with. And like it or not, laws and facts and figures and money and things we can grab hold of and touch do have meaning.

[Eoin McLove]

Loury and McWhorter are great on those issues and, yeah, they hold a certain weight being black men themselves. It's arguable whether that should matter, but it does, especially in these absurd times.

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

Good post Peadair  But I still disagree that people like Murray,  and Harris for that matter, are just coming along and trying to be rational. They're coming along with an agenda as obvious as BLM's.

[Pedrito]

Oh they are without a doubt. I would say they offer ideas. But it's an absolute mindfuck the whole thing and BLM most definitely do not have the nuance or the capacity to solve whatever they are saying needs solving. I suspect it will never truly get solved, but like most things, we will see gradual and progressive change, if the left doesn't kick off a civil war. Meanwhile, people will continue to listen to Murray and their ilk because at least some element of sense can be got from them. I definitely wouldn't agree with 50% of what they say but it passes the time during poo breaks.

[Caomhaoin]

Come off it, you're messing now.BLM's agenda is as clear and unmistakable as the comedown after 6 yokes or a kick square in the balls. What is more, they are complete opportunists, they pounced upon the Floyd killing, correctly sensing an opportunity to launch themselves into the stratosphere, previously having been viewed as a political afterthought, just another head on the progressive gorgon.

Murray may leave a bad taste in the high minded leftists collective mouth, but to compare his reasonably well thought out and consistent position (I strongly disagree that he 'knows it's bullshit') to high pitched, unsophisticated identity politics like those of BLM is too much, it's messin'.

[Pedrito]

That's my point. BLM are dazzling people with bullshit and fairydust. There's no coherence to anything. Opportunistic and dangerous.

Murray and Harris are open books, we can tell their biases which I have no issue with at all. The BLM thing is a thirst for power behind it all. All that making people kneel and repent their sins. I'd say they were laughing their arses off later on having a few beers when that mayor came washing their feet the fukin spa.

[Eoin McLove]

For the dunces in the audience (me), what do you think are the ulterior motives of Murray and Harris? I find them reasonable voices. Sure, Murray is a conservative but he's no raving fascist maniac by any stretch.

Ps. I sent off for The Strange Death of Europe and The Madness of Crowds today.  Better get shining my jackboots 

[Caomhaoin]

Ideological indoctrination.

Owning that literature, Andy, is the exact same as that officers commission in SS DAS REICH.

[Pedrito]

For the dunces in the audience (me), what do you think are the ulterior motives of Murray and Harris? I find them reasonable voices. Sure, Murray is a conservative but he's no raving fascist maniac by any stretch.

Ps. I sent off for The Strange Death of Europe and The Madness of Crowds today.  Better get shining my jackboots 

That's a question for Black Shep. I find the lads a good listen

[Eoin McLove]

Their ideologies, at least from anything I've listened to by them, seem more about finding a sensible middle ground where open dialogue can occur.  What's that ideology called? I'll sign up to it now.

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

BLM's agenda is as clear and unmistakable as the comedown after 6 yokes or a kick square in the balls.

Agreed. And thanks for the bad memories 

What is more, they are complete opportunists, they pounced upon the Floyd killing, correctly sensing an opportunity to launch themselves into the stratosphere, previously having been viewed as a political afterthought, just another head on the progressive gorgon.

There was as much media and corporate appropriation of the movement behind that as there was opportunism (of which, of course, there was also). Murray is being just as opportunistic with regard to his own agenda and how he's instrumentalizing BLM events to advance it, though. In that respect, this aspect is so universal as to be banal; it's not like Floyd's death was instrumentalized despite his family's wishes, and Blake's shooting hasn't been either.

Murray may leave a bad taste in the high minded leftists collective mouth, but to compare his reasonably well thought out and consistent position (I strongly disagree that he 'knows it's bullshit') to high pitched, unsophisticated identity politics like those of BLM is too much, it's messin'.

I'm just saying he has a very clear agenda. But, in passing, he did also argue against the notion of white privilege by saying it can't possibly exist because there are poor white people in Yorkshire, so...believe what you like about white privilege, that's the racism equivalent of "If we descended from apes, then how come there are still apes in the world?" And yes, I do think that he knows it's a shit argument, I believe he is smart enough to know it and cunning enough to say it anyway.

[Pedrito]

Murray would be concerned about borders in Europe, which I certainly have no issue with, but you could imagine what some signed up member of Karl Marx monthly thinks about that(not you Chris). He's a sensible lad, and the type of voice that's needed at the table when every twat is singing off the same hymnsheet on the likes of Question Time. He says things that others are uncomfortable or too scared to say.

[Eoin McLove]

Could his intention there be something more nuanced (I'm a fan so I'll give him the benefit of the doubt). Could he be saying, rather than white people are also poor ergo racism doesn't exist, that the issues are ones of economic inequality, not racism?